http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have glimpsed what could be the youngest known star at the very moment it is being born. Not yet fully developed into a true star, the object is in the earliest stages of star formation and has just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust, according to a new study that appears in the current issue of the Astrophysical Journal. http://phys.org/news195999802.html Space & Earth Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:25:33 EST news195999802 (PhysOrg.com) -- A spectacular new image of the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) has been taken with the ESO VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile as part of one of its first major observational campaigns. By observing in infrared light VISTA’s view is less affected by dust and reveals a myriad of cooler stars as well as a prominent bar of stars across the central region. The VISTA image provides much new information on the history and development of the galaxy. http://phys.org/news195901165.html Space & Earth Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:59:54 EST news195901165 A surprising discovery that hydrogen gas clouds found in abundance in and above our Milky Way Galaxy have preferred locations has given astronomers a key clue about the origin of such clouds, which play an important part in galaxy evolution. http://phys.org/news194091268.html Space & Earth Wed, 26 May 2010 11:40:06 EST news194091268 (PhysOrg.com) -- SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, will take flight May 25 along with the Cornell-built FORCAST (the Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope). http://phys.org/news194023667.html Space & Earth Tue, 25 May 2010 16:27:59 EST news194023667 (PhysOrg.com) -- Our sun may be an only child, but most of the stars in the galaxy are actually twins. The sibling stars circle around each other at varying distances, bound by the hands of gravity. http://phys.org/news193598120.html Space & Earth Thu, 20 May 2010 18:16:56 EST news193598120 The first scientific results from ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory are revealing previously hidden details of star formation. New images show thousands of distant galaxies furiously building stars and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way. One picture even catches an 'impossible' star in the act of formation. http://phys.org/news192368995.html Space & Earth Thu, 06 May 2010 12:50:15 EST news192368995 The formation of new stars in galaxies like the Milky Way has declined five-fold in the last three billion years, initial findings of the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope showed Thursday. http://phys.org/news192366041.html Space & Earth Thu, 06 May 2010 12:01:26 EST news192366041 New images from ESA's Planck space observatory reveal the forces driving star formation and give astronomers a way to understand the complex physics that shape the dust and gas in our Galaxy. http://phys.org/news191502258.html Space & Earth Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:50:16 EST news191502258 (PhysOrg.com) -- Although many of the details about star formation are vigorously debated, the general principles are reasonably well understood. http://phys.org/news190637945.html Space & Earth Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:30:01 EST news190637945 (PhysOrg.com) -- Mission engineers and scientists with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space telescope that has been beaming back pictures of galaxies for three times its design lifespan, are no longer planning science observations around one of its two ultraviolet detectors. http://phys.org/news190357207.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:00:38 EST news190357207 (PhysOrg.com) -- Today, ESO is unveiling an image of the little known Gum 19, a faint nebula that, in the infrared, appears dark on one half and bright on the other. On one side hot hydrogen gas is illuminated by a supergiant blue star called V391 Velorum. New star formation is taking place within the ribbon of luminous and dark material that brackets V391 Velorum’s left in this perspective. After many millennia, these fledgling stars, coupled with the explosive demise of V391 Velorum as a supernova, will likely alter Gum 19’s present Janus-like appearance. http://phys.org/news189251361.html Space & Earth Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:49:48 EST news189251361 Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in the early Universe. http://phys.org/news187386412.html Space & Earth Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:47:09 EST news187386412 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have made great strides recently in understanding how modest stars - those like the sun or smaller -- are formed. http://phys.org/news187369376.html Space & Earth Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:03:37 EST news187369376 (PhysOrg.com) -- This is a composite image of NGC 1068, one of the nearest and brightest galaxies containing a rapidly growing supermassive black hole. http://phys.org/news186850424.html Space & Earth Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:10:01 EST news186850424 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Arizona astronomers have helped solve a mystery surrounding the birth of stars in galaxies that has long puzzled scientists. Their results are published in the Feb. 11 issue of Nature. http://phys.org/news185120732.html Space & Earth Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:00:02 EST news185120732 (PhysOrg.com) -- ESO is releasing a magnificent VLT image of the giant stellar nursery surrounding NGC 3603, in which stars are continuously being born. Embedded in this scenic nebula is one of the most luminous and most compact clusters of young, massive stars in our Milky Way, which therefore serves as an excellent “local” analogue of very active star-forming regions in other galaxies. The cluster also hosts the most massive star to be "weighed" so far. http://phys.org/news184414099.html Space & Earth Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:08:35 EST news184414099 (PhysOrg.com) -- Two spectacular tails of X-ray emission has been seen trailing behind a galaxy using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. http://phys.org/news183363341.html Space & Earth Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:20:01 EST news183363341 (PhysOrg.com) -- As part of its Hubble Heritage program, NASA has released an image, taken by a team led by UA astronomer Rodger Thompson, of a galaxy that resembles a snowflake. http://phys.org/news183039227.html Space & Earth Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:15:43 EST news183039227 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ultraluminous infrared galaxies have luminosities that exceed a trillion suns. http://phys.org/news182786528.html Space & Earth Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:02:31 EST news182786528 (PhysOrg.com) -- Galaxies throughout the universe are ablaze with star birth. But for a nearby, small spiral galaxy, the star-making party is almost over. http://phys.org/news182710468.html Space & Earth Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:54:55 EST news182710468 (PhysOrg.com) -- For more than two decades, the cold dark matter theory has been used by cosmologists to explain how the smooth universe born in the big bang more than 13 billion years ago evolved into the filamentary, galaxy-rich cosmic web that we see today. http://phys.org/news182605949.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:00:38 EST news182605949 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have only modest laboratories to probe the mysteries of the cosmos. Mostly they have to rely on meticulous and clever observations of remote phenomena. http://phys.org/news182439231.html Space & Earth Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:36:23 EST news182439231 (PhysOrg.com) -- Most searches for planets around other stars, also known as exoplanets, focus on Sun-like stars. Those searches have proven successful, turning up more than 400 alien worlds. However, Sun-like stars aren't the only potential homes for planets. New research by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) confirms that planet formation is a natural by-product of star formation, even around stars much heftier than the Sun. http://phys.org/news182024357.html Space & Earth Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:20:23 EST news182024357 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international research project involving the University of Adelaide has revealed that the magnetic field in the centre of the Milky Way is at least 10 times stronger than the rest of the Galaxy. http://phys.org/news181983028.html Space & Earth Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:00:05 EST news181983028 (PhysOrg.com) -- More than 12 billion years of cosmic history are shown in this unprecedented, panoramic, full-color view of thousands of galaxies in various stages of assembly. http://phys.org/news181991747.html Space & Earth Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:16:13 EST news181991747 (PhysOrg.com) -- The constellation of Vela (visible only from the southern hemisphere) contains a set of giant clouds of gas and dust known collectively as the Vela Molecular complex. http://phys.org/news181820317.html Space & Earth Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:39:28 EST news181820317 Stars in globular clusters are generally extremely old, with ages of 12-13 billion years. However, a small fraction of them appear to be significantly younger than the average population and, because they seem to have been left behind by the stars that followed the normal path of stellar evolution and became red giants, have been dubbed blue stragglers. http://phys.org/news180783454.html Space & Earth Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:00:01 EST news180783454 (PhysOrg.com) -- Two brown dwarf-sized objects orbiting a giant old star show that planets may assemble around stars more quickly and efficiently than anyone thought possible, according to an international team of astronomers. http://phys.org/news180627887.html Space & Earth Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:49:05 EST news180627887 (PhysOrg.com) -- The European Space Agency has released a preview of the first science results from the Herschel Space Observatory, including the UK-led SPIRE instrument. The new data which include images of previously invisible stardust - the stuff that all life is made from - will give us valuable new information about how stars and galaxies are made and reveal the life cycle of the cosmos. http://phys.org/news180369536.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:00:02 EST news180369536 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ultraluminous infrared galaxies ((ULIRGs) are galaxies whose luminosity exceeds that of a trillion suns; for comparison, the Milky Way galaxy has a typical (and much more modest) luminosity of only about ten billion suns. ULIRGs were discovered by an all-sky infrared survey satellite in the 1980's, and since then the origin(s) of their huge infrared emission has been widely debated. Extreme infrared activity is known to be associated with interacting galaxies, and optical imaging indeed shows that many ULIRGs are in collision, but this fact does not answer the question of what physical mechanism powers the luminosity. Might the same process be underway at a low level in our galaxy? http://phys.org/news178544948.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:55:01 EST news178544948